After so much heated debate, after so many arguments and so many dollar figures, you might well be wondering what the downtown arena deal means for you.

Is it a good deal or a bad one? It is going to cost you or not?

First, let’s look at the financing of the $480-million arena.

Right now, about $2.5 million a year of your tax dollars go to subsidize Northlands to run Rexall Place. In the new deal, this same money shifts over to help pay for the downtown arena. Combined with new parking revenues from the downtown arena, this will pay for $80 million of the arena’s total cost.

That’s a hit for Northlands, but a wash for you.

Right now, if you attend concerts and hockey games at Rexall Place, you pay a ticket tax. That money, about $7 million a year, is split between Oilers owner Daryl Katz and Northlands.

In the new deal, the ticket tax money won’t go to Katz or Northlands, but will cover $125 million for the arena. That’s also a break-even proposition for you.

Same with operating costs of the arena, which Northlands handles at Rexall Place and Katz will pay for at the new arena, to the tune of $10 million-plus per year. No change for you here.

Under his current lease at Rexall, Katz pays $1 a year rent. In the new building, he will pay about $6 million a year. These lease payments will cover $112.8 million of the new arena’s cost. Katz will also chip in $17 million upfront. He put in $15 million of that at the last minute to help this deal move ahead.

For all that, Katz will get all the revenue out of the new venue.

And you? There’s no added cost to you here, but you do get to enjoy a spacious new arena as opposed to cramped Rexall Place.

Another $25 million for the new arena is slated to come from a provincial fund for regional projects.

This is how people in places such St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Spruce Grove and Leduc will help pay for the new arena. Folks outside Edmonton make up about a third of those who attend games and concerts. It would have been great if they had put in more. You might well be a bit sore about this, but $25 million from the arena’s regional users is better than nothing.

Finally, another $120 million for the arena will come from new property tax revenues generated in our downtown over the next 20 years. These are property tax dollars that the downtown will produce even if the city’s economy goes bust, city administrators say.

Of course, these new tax dollars could be spent elsewhere than an arena, so you might not like that if you never go downtown or use the arena.

At the same time, downtown pays about 10 per cent of the city’s property taxes but has received less than two per cent of the infrastructure spending in the past decade. This investment in downtown is fair. Plus, if the arena district really does become a major tourist attraction as some envision, it will spur both a downtown renaissance and a downtown property tax boom.

In total, private money from Katz and from arena users will pay for $255 million, 53 per cent of the $480-million of the arena’s cost. The average private-to-public split for an NHL arena is 56 per cent private, 44 per cent public. The Oilers generate average revenues for an NHL team, so this is an average NHL arena deal for an average NHL team. City council hasn’t made some historic blunder here. Instead, it has paid the going rate.

One important note: the arena contractor will have to guarantee the $480-million price. If the project goes over-budget, you and other taxpayers won’t be on the hook, the contractor will be.

In the end, there’s the promise of a better downtown to consider, but, most of all, if we didn’t do this deal we’d still need a better arena someday soon. That would mean putting $200-plus million of your tax dollars into a doughnut concourse level around Rexall Place, or paying who knows how much more for a downtown arena.

With all that in mind, what do you think about the arena deal now? My own conviction is that if you took any 13 reasonable Edmontonians and put them on city council, they would have voted pretty much the same as the 13 reasonable Edmontonians on council did on Wednesday, 10 to 3 in favour of this project.

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